NEW ORLEANS – Both the NYSE and NASDAQ received boosts yesterday as unexpected news ushered in a close to the day’s trading: after mistaking the Sun Belt Conference for a telecommunications company, industry giants AT&T and AOL-Time Warner followed up their error by merging with the SBC in a $1.8 trillion dollar deal, the largest in history.

Above: two teams that are probably in the Sun Belt Conference.

“We are extraordinarily excited at the possibilities of this new partnership,” SBC commissioner Wright Waters said from his Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits-based office on Canal Street.

“The universities and programs representing the SBC are institutions of excellence. Though we have little traditional history in telecommunications or mass media, we have always excelled at meeting challenges and exceeding expectations. We expect the best of ourselves, and we now have $1.8 trillion reasons to believe our expectations.”

Waters continued: “This is awesome. So awesome. Yes.”

This deal is the first merger between multi-billion dollar corporations and a college football mid-major conference, with far reaching ramifications for both the telecommunications industry and the Bowl Championship Series. Though most experts were hesitant to predict any quarterly or fiscal year fluctuations resulting from the enormous merger, the mood was one of cautious confusion.

According to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox the federal regulatory community is looking into the merger with the curiosity of motorists passing “dead bodies everywhere on an off ramp.”

“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. Did you see that?” Cox offered as further explanation for his agency’s proposed “gawking” action, a period of internal investigation into “what the fuck just happened over there” traditionally lasting six to ten weeks.

Another SEC – the Southeastern Conference – was also left gawking after news of the merger reached the college football world. As one of the most prestigious and toughest athletic conferences in the nation the SEC has long acted as a big brother figure to many of the smaller football playing schools located in the south, particularly in the southeast region of America which considers Saturday afternoon games both a birthright and a religion.

“It was a mentoring partnership, a nurturing and guiding role,” former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer said of the relationship between the BCS conference and the lesser known universities south of the Mason-Dixon line.

“We protected them and helped them grow by inviting them into our homes where we destroyed them for annual paychecks. Everyone benefited: we got a win, they got money, and television got Auburn versus Western Kentucky. Some people didn’t like it, but there’s always the few. In the Renaissance they needed patrons. What would Florence have been without the Medici family? Without their money? Because of us Arkansas State has flowered into whatever it’s flowered into. We’re the Popes of the sixteenth century, and Middle Tennessee is our Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo needed patronage to give us David. We are that patronage.”

Kramer paused, then corrected himself: “We were that patronage.”

Now that the SBC has at its disposal nearly two trillion dollars worth of assets – not to mention the multi-media arms of AOL-Time Warner and its publishing, movie, television and other original content archives, plus the indomitable will of the Ragin’ Cajuns of Louisiana-Lafayette – the once looked over conference doesn’t need the money that an away game in, say, Knoxville represents. Florida International will now be able to engage opponents in brawls within the comfortable enclosures of FIU stadium, a full twelve miles away from such hostile environments as the Orange Bowl. The so far unstated fear of Kramer and the SEC is that the balance of power has shifted.

Experts point to SBC schools’ ability to now text message an unlimited amount of times thanks to AT&T’s employee cellular plans, which also include extended anytime minute benefits that will give coaches the ability to call recruits almost twice as much as an SEC school. Roaming charges are a thing of the past for the staff of North Texas.

Said one Mean Green assistant coach who did not wish to be named: “I’m callin’ [California running back and likely high school All-American] Darrell Scott right now. At three in the afternoon. Outside of my zone. [USC head coach] Pete Carroll is gonna be shittin’ bricks, and [Texas head coach] Mack Brown’ll eat ’em.”

One BCS school official who also required anonmity had this to say: “The Sun Belt Coalition [sic] can do whatever it wants now. Who cares if they don’t get a BCS invite? We get one every year despite clear indications we shouldn’t, so nothing sacred is being broken or anything. They can build their own bowl game with a $50 million payout and call it the ‘Turd Bowl’ and we’d probably crawl to their door. I just hope our NBC contract doesn’t fall through now.”

Over and over again the primary concern of other college football coaches and administrations was money: how much more the SBC now has, and how much behind everyone else now is – but they are not alone in their consideration of money. After his discovery that the SBC was in fact a mid-major college football conference stretching from Florida to Texas, AT&T Chief Financial Officer Richard Lindner expressed some doubts about the merger.

“While we certainly respect [the SBC], I have to wonder if their… $3.12 million dollar… contribution. Contribution? Contribution to our $1.8 trillion enterprise. I have to wonder if that’s… commensurate,” Lindner said.

Lindner would not speculate on a renunciation of the merger, citing confidentiality agreements.

An ecstatic Waters was not so tight lipped: “We have the best lawyers local television can advertise. Johnson vs. the state of Missourri, 1992. Precedence. They signed a non-Indian giving clause. Fine print, baby. Who wants some Cristal?”

Wow. Do you know who’s really on the short end of the stick? Idaho, New Mexico State and Utah State. Three years ago they were all in the Sun Belt, but they bailed after the realignment. If they just had patience, they would be basking in the SBC’s newfound glory.

This means world-class facilities for all of the schools, and not just in football. Texas’ athletic budget is $70 million. If every school in the Sun Belt spends that much per year, they would collectively become the power conference to end all power conferences, and would only extinguish the money in 2,000 years.

Wait a minute…Is Dennis Erickson going to coach-hop to the Sun Belt now? And what does it say about our society that we’re going to build a 70,000 seat world class stadium in Jonesboro, Arkansas?

Don’t forget the 112,000 capacity bowl being built in Murfreesboro. Combined, the two facilities will be the biggest -boro duo since Sao Paolo and Rio were called Brazilboro and Brasilboro, respectively.

Also, I told Greg he should initiate a one sided poopy gang war as his birthday present. Dunno if he’ll take my advice, since he’s an inveterate fool.

Hmmm, lots of money equals championships. That’s the route USC took right? I hope Reggie’s folks left the beach house and the Benz in good shape for the next top recruit’s family. That’s just what good considerate greedy people using their beloved son as a paycheck do right?

Idaho, New Mexico State and Utah State bailed from the Belt because they couldn’t even win there.

Yeah, the belt is on the bottom tier of the CFB world but it’s funny that they had 4 bowl eligible teams and so did Conference USA, a conference who the Belt beat head to head this year 4 games to 3. What’s even funnier is that a mid tier SBC team takes out the Conference USA champ. But it’s a lot easier to make fun of the Belt right? I mean it’s just got to be tough for anyone in L.A. to know anything about college football outside of USC. I guess it would be too hard to look up conference records and see that half of our teams actually were bowl eligible right? I’m surprised you even got our commish’s name correctly. I lived in L.A. for a while and trust me, besides the PAC 10, you pick up nothing else except mindless talk radio that cares more about who wins the friggin oscars than who wins the NC.

Before you guys got petey, you were sub par at best and heck in 01′ you went 6-6 and MTSU in Brazilboro went 8-3, being in D-1a for only 2 years then. I lived in LA during that year and thought that was funny then. After Petey, you guys blow the doors open. When you got money to pay your players and buy their parents nice homes in the hills and a buy good coach, anything is possible.

The measly Belt can’t match that overhead but it is nice that I can still go to game with my family without dealing with drunk gangbangers at the Coliseum, parking 2 miles away, spending 3 hours to drive 10 miles just to get there, or dodging “real classy knowledgeable football fans” who drop the f word at least twice in every sentence. It was probably better when they weren’t there before 02′. I’ve been to the Coliseum and actually met your classy fans. So this is not dreamed up like your pulitzer prize winning story.

Moving out of LA back to my obscure Brazilboro was the best thing I ever did. I mean getting an all brick 2500 sq. ft. home with an half acre yard for 1/15th of the price of a crap shack in west LA made leaving that armpit of a city a tough choice. So continue to poke fun at struggling up and coming conferences as you drink your $6.95 cup of coffee and nibble on your $3.00 bagel while you empty your bank account on your crap shack with the nice car that needs new brakes every 5 minutes cuz of the “great traffic” that you enjoy in smog city. Oh, you can also keep pretending that you know anything about football outside of LA as well.

You know the best part about this is that I didn’t have to spend days dreaming this crap up from scratch like you did. Good luck to you and I hope Petey doesn’t “bolt” for the Chargers.

Hmmm, lots of money equals championships. That’s the route USC took right? I hope Reggie’s folks left the beach house and the Benz in good shape for the next top recruit’s family. That’s just what good considerate greedy people using their beloved son as a paycheck do right?

Idaho, New Mexico State and Utah State bailed from the Belt because they couldn’t even win there.

Yeah, the belt is on the bottom tier of the CFB world but it’s funny that they had 4 bowl eligible teams and so did Conference USA, a conference who the Belt beat head to head this year 4 games to 3. What’s even funnier is that a mid tier SBC team takes out the Conference USA champ. But it’s a lot easier to make fun of the Belt right? I mean it’s just got to be tough for anyone in L.A. to know anything about college football outside of USC. I guess it would be too hard to look up conference records and see that half of our teams actually were bowl eligible right? I’m surprised you even got our commish’s name correct. I lived in L.A. for a while and trust me, besides the PAC 10, you pick up nothing else except mindless talk radio that cares more about who wins the friggin oscars than who wins the NC.

Before you guys got petey, you were sub par at best and heck in 01′ you went 6-6 and MTSU in Brazilboro went 8-3, being in D-1a for only 2 years then. I lived in LA during that year and thought that was funny then. After Petey, you guys blow the doors open. When you got money to pay your players and buy their parents nice homes in the hills and buy a good coach, anything is possible.

The measly Belt can’t match that overhead but it is nice that I can still go to game with my family without dealing with drunk gangbangers at the Coliseum, parking 2 miles away, spending 3 hours to drive 10 miles just to get there, or dodging “real classy knowledgeable football fans” who drop the f word at least twice in every sentence. It was probably better when they weren’t there before 02′. I’ve been to the Coliseum and actually met your classy fans. So this is not dreamed up like your pulitzer prize winning story.

Moving out of LA back to my obscure Brazilboro was the best thing I ever did. I mean getting an all brick 2500 sq. ft. home with an half acre yard for 1/15th of the price of a crap shack in west LA made leaving that armpit of a city a tough choice. So continue to poke fun at struggling up and coming conferences as you drink your $6.95 cup of coffee and nibble on your $3.00 bagel while you empty your bank account on your crap shack with the nice car that needs new brakes every 5 minutes cuz of the “great traffic” that you enjoy in smog city. Oh, you can also keep pretending that you know anything about football outside of LA as well.

You know the best part about this is that I didn’t have to spend days dreaming this crap up from scratch like you did. Good luck to you and I hope Petey doesn’t “bolt” for the Chargers.

That was seriously the best comment I’ve ever got. Midway through the usual acid attack reflex rose up but it calmed down somewhere near the $6.95 coffee cup comment. Who the hell has $6.95?

Anyway, as Garbage said, this post happened literally because I was staring at lists of conferences and my eyes alighted on SBC. AT&T and SBC recently merged. I dig the surreal so it wasn’t hard to make two or three Kevin Bacon jumps to what appears above.

There’s no vitriol here for the mid-majors. I like ’em. I’ll be visiting one of your ‘boros come the fall during my epic 14 week journey through America and all its college football glory. It’s likely I’ll catch a MAC game as they tend to have dibs on Thursday night tilts, though, but I’d love to see the Nevada pistol formation in person. Or a Southern Miss whoop ass can of. As someone who has sat down and watched a Mount Union game from start to finish on a Friday night I know beggars can’t be choosers.

But it is funny to see the automatic “little guy” reaction rise up, especially when it involves a pretty accurate depiction of the USC experience that most USC fans don’t want to admit to. Not so much the f-bombs and stuff (it’s a football stadium, so no shit) but the almost deathly pall the program had pre-2001 and the bandwagoneering it had after. There’s some fire and brimstone in Murfreesboro it appears. Just not any logic concerning accusations of money laundering and improper benefits. Hellooooooo. Who needs benefits when you have Song Girls?

Also, the above was really just a swipe at the SEC and its scheduling philosophies.

So USC goes 6-6 in 01 and has a shot to win in 02 and wins the championship in 03 and 04 and no money is involved to get players in the door? Bush’s family didn’t take the cash or the nice crib when every media source pretty much verified that something went down. Good lawyers and smart connections swept it all under the rug but it didn’t happen right?

You go from licking UCLA’s rear to holding the crystal in 2 years with a mid level NFL coach and it is legit with no money being paid out to players? Now that’s funny. I think we all know better. I know you are a student who is trying to be clever and impress your frat buddies but if you really look close enough, you’ll see that money always leaves a trail even when it’s been fluffed and folded by friends of the program. This isn’t meant to be a criticism. I actually wasn’t directing this as an insult. The SEC has done this for decades. You think Bear Bryant lost all that money at the horse races? He probably was writing personal checks out of his own account. It still exists and the NCAA only looks where they want to. Fulmer makes claims, Bama gets torched. In the meantime, he and “his friends” are calling the banks lining up preapproved credit loans for 5 bedroom houses for a 5 star recruit’s fam. Bomar is making 18 g’s working a summer job for a “friend of the program” but Bush is clean and his Fam is too right? Whatever.

As far as my broke ass bucket is concerned, at least I got room to put my feet bro. My conference is broke and I love it. You know what happens when money gets dumped into a program too quickly right? You are SC, of course you do. You have to start giving out bonuses based on performance, stock options, company cars, house decorating per diems and $6.95 cups of coffee (which gets expensive) It’s not that we don’t want the great players and success, it’s that dang overhead. An average SBC school only graduates a couple hundred accounting majors a year. That’s not enough to handle the expense reports, tax shelters, or investment strategies for the players and their entorauges. Plus if the overhead outweighs the ability of the product then there could be bankruptcy. The conference could not stand for it. They would lose a member and even more cash.

SC, well that’s different. They probably graduate a couple of thousand accountants, leaving more than enough to handle the work.

I know Johnathan has to go to USC. He’s too clever. I’ve been to stadiums all over myself. Which is why I went to the Coliseum. I love the game. I mean heck, I’ll even go to that crappy place to watch a game.

As far as the f bombs go, when you have a little son or daughter and some drunk idiot cusses at your kids for no reason you might be tempted to catch a game where people actually have a brain and treat people like they have one too. You can call it fire and brimstone if you want bro, I just call it acting like you have some friggin sense.

I promise you Brazilboro would treat you better than your own town even with a crappy SC shirt on. But why would that even matter? It doesn’t. Crappy places with money equals a better 401k plan for the players and that is all the fans want anyway. Make sure you cheer for a school that thinks of their players so much that they have HR people just for them and their families. That’s pure football.

The SBC will get no respect until they can offer vacation packages and nice cars. An education with crappy cafeteria food can’t compare to a country club membership. It’s just dollars and sense.